News & Updates | Posted Tuesday, September 3, 2013
When Bill Recker and Carma Agan lost their Buck Creek, Iowa, home to flash flooding in June, they would have faced a lonely struggle to recover if it weren’t for the Delaware County Disaster Recovery Committee. With support from Church World Service, that community-based group is “working on multiple fronts with these folks to generate enough support to get them …
News & Updates | Posted Wednesday, August 14, 2013
The fight against hunger is part of our DNA at CWS, and it is being re-affirmed with a new recommitment in our programs and among our staff. As part of that effort, United Methodist photographer Paul Jeffrey and I are starting work on a book on global hunger – the third of a “humanitarian trilogy,” for Seabury Books, an imprint …
News & Updates | Posted Friday, August 9, 2013
It has been over three years since the 2010 Haiti earthquake, yet when walking down the streets of Port-au-Prince there are moments when you feel like it just happened. You turn the corner to look over the mountain and see hundreds of blue tents lined up back-to-back. There are still a half million Haitians living in tents. It’s a heartbreaking …
News & Updates | Posted Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Hunger is a serious issue and those of us who work to end it are serious about our mission. That doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun while doing it! A colleague and I recently staffed the CWS booth at the Presbyterian Youth Triennium held at Purdue University. Some 5,000 Presbyterians from Alaska to Maine came together for a …
News & Updates | Posted Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Recent shipments of CWS Kits and Blankets mean practical comfort for survivors of flooding in Ohio, wildfires in Colorado, tornadoes in Oklahoma, Superstorm Sandy in New York and a series of disasters in West Virginia. Materials sent by request of local service providers include: 200 CWS Emergency Cleanup Buckets, going to First Christian Church in Mansfield, Ohio, for distribution to …
News & Updates | Posted Saturday, July 13, 2013
The call to action is simple and compelling: “Whether as an individual, community, business, non-governmental organization (NGO) or a government department, all you have to do on July 18 is donate 67 minutes of your day to doing something good in any way you can. Nelson Mandela gave 67 years of his life to the struggle for social justice. Can …
News & Updates | Posted Saturday, July 6, 2013
Around the United States communities are celebrating the 4th of July this weekend with fireworks, festivals and parades. Families are coming together for Independence Day cookouts. Except not everyone that gathers this holiday will have enough food to put on the (picnic) table. “In our country, in the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world, the reality …
News & Updates | Posted Saturday, June 29, 2013
When organizing CROP Hunger Walks, the phone is your friend. CWS field staff spend a lot of time calling congregations, colleges, individuals or anyone else who will listen about growing CROP Hunger Walks. Nothing is better than getting a call from a person who wants to start a CROP Hunger Walk. Seriously, you should see our faces when we hear …
News & Updates | Posted Monday, June 17, 2013
New York, N.Y./Galavani, Republic of Georgia – Development and relief agency CWS welcomes the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s announcement on Wednesday that 38 countries, including several where CWS supports local hunger and malnutrition programs, have met the internationally established Millennium Development Goals to cut hunger in half by 2015. The FAO also congratulated 18 of those countries for …
News & Updates | Posted Friday, May 24, 2013
For CWS Great Plains Assistant Regional Director Rebekah Belase, this past week’s devastating tornados struck very close to home. Belase commutes to her office in Topeka, Kansas, from her home in Stillwater, Okla. Stillwater is about a 90-minute drive from Moore. It feels even closer – “I have quite a few friends from college who live in Moore and Norman,” …